Split Roots
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Taiyang spent years waiting for his family to form. But they still ended up broken, all the same.
Taiyang watched through the months as Raven grew and swelled to expand inside the space above the duvet, successfully cutting off his view of his favourite tree when he woke up. True, he could have leant to one side, perching his chin inside the shelf his hand made for him as his elbow formed a constellation point out of the rumpled pillow below, but then he would have missed the first glisten of sunlight playing its way across her skin. At eight months her stomach rose above her night-shirt in a wave, appearing golden under the morning hue like an over-ripe lemon. Not that he was dumb enough to say anything to Raven about it, of course.

 _I love you_ , he told 'it', her, every single day without speaking _. I love what you have given me._ And the sentiment remained silent, unspoken, locked away inside his throat as Raven woke, unfurling from his side like a cat that needed to stretch, before she attempted to stride away from the glancing blow of his morning kiss.

'I have to practise,' she told him with a smirk, and then she waltzed away, ready to slide her sword it out of its holster, to cleave the air with unfamiliar strokes in patterns that made Taiyang's eyes ache, simply because they lacked the grace of months before.

And then one day, about a week before Yang was born, she had turned to look down at her stomach with a frown. 'You are making me lazy,' she remarked idly, with no trace of anger waiting below to stain her voice. 'And now you have the cheek to sit beneath and kick out at me, like a knife under my ribs.' She paused to run a hand over the line of her that, for months now, had blocked out Taiyang's well-loved tree. 'So impatient. I hope you don't become a swordswoman. You don't have the right temperament for it.'

* * *

Summer, by contrast, even with the filter of years dizzying the memory of Raven's growth, grew slowly, the hue of her skin appearing illicit by moonlight and taking on a waxy, unhealthy sheen when exposed to the sun. But still, Taiyang could not bear to watch her eclipse his tree, so he urged her to switch sides with him, to take up the side of the bed nearest the door.

'So superstitious,' she had teased, as she walked right into the welcome of his morning kiss. 'I'll remember this, when I am struggling to push out our second daughter. And then it'll be your turn to put up with whatever rituals I demand from you.'

And like a breeze, her words took the sting of fear out of his heart. _'Our second daughter,'_ he thought, re-quoted from within the safety of his mind. _Yes_. He read it as a reassurance, a promise not to run away, to escape from the life that now poked out curiously from her belly in the shape of a small fist, or perhaps this time, a gentle foot.

'She is not as fierce as Yang was,' he observed as he held a palm out to receive that same, tentative touch. It pressed out from inside Summer's skin, as wandering as a petal caught by a tug of wind.

And Summer smiled. 'But no less strong. Are you, my little jewel?' she crooned, flicking fingers across the tatters of trembling skin that ran away, escaping Taiyang's touch to meet her own. 'I can't wait,' she murmured, her eyes glowing with a familiar metallic shine, 'to see what you grow to become.'

* * *

Taiyang watched now, as that fifteen year old jewel breathed, slow and shallow, against the light outside. It ran over her skin and made mincemeat out of the shadows his hand cautiously tried to flick out across her form. There was no tree outside her room, no leaves to bar the sight that spilled through the glass in a view he would have loved to watch her wake up to see, but it seemed, that much like the time he had spent locked outside Raven's and Summer's feelings, that he was doomed to be an observer once again.

Minutes later, he stepped out, fearing the impossible slowing of her breath. She wouldn't, couldn't die, not from this; she had barely began to grow.

And he felt himself governed, pulled like gravity to his elder daughter's room. And the sun shone across her features equally as brightly, her skin soaking up the rays with the same fine sheen of a leaf dappled into perfect health. But when she looked up at him, it was with eyes that spoke of a dulled-down fear, a look he had been achingly familiar with in the days leading up to Raven's disappearance.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thought. _I'm sorry your mother was never here to teach you how to wait, to watch for the swing of a sword that I never taught you to hold. If she had, maybe you wouldn't be missing half of your arsenal now. I did my best, but like always, it wasn't enough._

'Hi Dad,' she said lowly, dully. 'I guess by your expression that Ruby hasn't woken up to join the pity party yet?'

He swallowed. 'No,' he said, 'not yet.'

She sighed and looked back out of the window. 'Just as well. It's not like there' s anything for her to do except be miserable with the rest of us.'

It wasn't like he could say anything to that. He had spent the last decade, or near enough to it, being miserable after all, without Summer's presence to stir his soul back into life. What hope had he now of bestowing the words _she_ could have found so easily into their first daughter's needy ear?

'There's some spare chicken in the fridge,' he found himself saying instead. 'If you need it, I'll be happy to cook it up into a broth?'

He saw the small rise of one of her shoulders, the left one, the one which still had an arm attached and hated himself a little more. Because she was right. And all he could do, once again, was wait.

* * *

 _Like knives under my skin, swords waiting to cut through_ , Raven had said, thought, told him when she was cross, labeling the +baby under her skin as a weapon and nothing more.

 _Like something waiting to be mined_ , Summer had confessed in a delighted whisper, _something I wish to bring into the light and see shine_. She, in contrast, had labelled Ruby as a gift.

But what of curses? These two women had woven their way into Taiyang's life, thrown daughters into his path, and then expected him to sew up whatever cracks that their ancestry had threaded through his two girls' veins. Ruby's was a little further along than Yang's. But there was still time for more...strangeness to manifest.

 _I never carried them inside me_ , Taiyang thought, _but I'll do my best, now that they're here, to carry them forward. And hopefully, past the ghosts of you both._


End file.
